[7] In 1840 the North Carolina General Assembly passed a law prohibiting free nonwhites from bearing arms without a license from the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions in their county.

In 1853 the North Carolina Supreme Court affirmed the legality of the law in its ruling for State v. Noel Locklear, involving the case of a man convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm.

[18] The Native Americans' aid to the Union escapees, their attempts to dodge labor conscription, and the murder of Barnes drew the attention of the Confederate Home Guard, a paramilitary force tasked with maintaining law and order in the South during the war.

Two of Jarman's brothers were working at Fort Fisher (Harris had earlier conscripted them) but, several weeks after the killing, they were granted leave and returned to Robeson County to visit their parents.

[21] To preempt any attempts at vengeance, Harris led a Home Guard unit in arresting the brothers on charges of desertion and said he would transport them to the Moss Neck rail depot where they could be taken by train back to Fort Fisher.

[24] On March 3, a detachment of the Home Guard under Captain Hugh McGreggor arrested Allen and Mary Lowry, three of their sons—William, Calvin, and Sinclair—some female relatives, and their Lumbee neighbor, George Dial.

The women were locked in the smokehouse while the men were interrogated outside facing accusations of "highway robbery", aiding Confederate deserters and Union escapees, stockpiling weapons, and having dodged labor conscription.

[36] Local government in Robeson mostly continued as it had during the war, with rich white men of prominence dominating public offices, especially the justices of the peace who constituted the county court.

[59] Republican officials were reluctant to take any action concerning the previous lawlessness in Robeson, since prosecuting former Home Guardsmen would harm their law and order campaign, while targeting the Lowry Gang would split their local base of support.

"[61] Soon thereafter, the new Republican Governor of North Carolina, William Woods Holden, received a written petition from over 50 Robesonians asking for him to declare Henry Berry Lowry and his gang outlaws.

[63] In attempt to broker a peaceful and less politically risky solution, two prominent local Republicans, Freedmens' Bureau agent Alfred Thomas and Robeson Sheriff Benjamin A. Howell, met with Lowry at his home to convince him to surrender.

Owen Clinton Norment, a member of a prominent Robeson family, decided to cooperate with the Republican Reconstruction government to regain influence and was appointed captain of the Police Guard.

[79] Lumbee oral tradition maintains that Rhoda Strong walked to Wilmington from Scuffletown and distracted the guards with "womanly charms" while an accomplice slipped the gang members tools to break out.

On the morning of their escape, the outlaws left their cell when the guard on duty went downstairs to speak with a colleague, climbed through the hole Applewhite had carved, and descended to the ground with a rope fashioned out of blankets.

[81] To incentivize capture of the gang members, the now Conservative-dominated General Assembly voted during its 1870/1871 session to offer $2,000 each for the "delivery, dead or alive" of Henry, Tom and Steve Lowry; Henderson Oxendine, George Applewhite, and Boss Strong to the authorities.

[87] The guardsmen took them to the mill pond of William C. McNeil where an execution by firing squad was prepared at the direction of John Taylor, a wealthy planter, former member of the Home Guard, and a known racist.

Saunders had established contact with Henry Berry Lowry and told him he would help the gang escape westward, reportedly with the secret intention of having them arrested in South Carolina or Georgia, far away from their homeland.

"[46] Thus denied, Thomas posted his men at various stations along the Wilmington, Charlotte and Rutherford Railroad and the situation in the county calmed, the Lowry Band seemingly wary of engaging the troops.

[46] The Wilmington, Charlotte and Rutherford Railroad Company, though it shuttled federal troops, tried to keep armed bounty hunters off of its trains and strived for neutrality in the overall conflict, not seeking to become a target of the outlaws.

[46] Several hundred yards away from the federal encampment at the Moss Neck rail depot, Henry Berry Lowry, accompanied by Boss Strong, rose from an embankment on the side of a road and shot John Taylor through the head.

[112] Two of the men named in Russel's indictment, Faulk Floyde and Malcolm McNeill, unbothered by the proclamation of outlawry against them, quickly returned to Robeson County and joined with nine others in a "compact" to kill the Lowry Gang.

Wishart sent scouts into the Scuffletown area to gather intelligence and drew a detailed map of the region, labeling small footpaths in the swamps and appending the names of the local inhabitants to their residences.

The family complied, and when they were finished eating Henry Berry Lowry told McNair to tell the sheriff and county commissioners to release his wife from jail or he would "retaliate on the white women of Burnt Swamp Township".

[144] On the Monday of July 17, the day the gang's ultimatum expired,[145] the outlaw band ambushed Police Guardsman Murdoch McLean as he rode with his younger brother Hugh and a third associate, Archy McCallum, in a buggy towards Shoe Heel.

[164] The strain of Lumbee oral tradition which contains Lowry's death agrees that his body was placed in a coffin built by Jesse Oxendine and taken by other gang members into Back Swamp.

[174] The Conservative-backed measure was designed to protect members of the Ku Klux Klan,[176] and the last section of the law read, "the provisions of this act shall not be construed to extend amnesty to [...] Steve Lowry.

[193] The Northern press coverage of the Lowry conflict, especially that of the New York Herald, generally fit into the local color genre, portraying Robeson County and the larger South as exotic and picturesque but also poor and backwards.

"[204] He also asserted that despite being officially deemed "local bandits" by the government, the Lowry Gang was given "special treatment" by the authorities, namely in large bounties being placed on its members relative to other contemporary groups of outlaws in the United States.

It appears to have failed, furthermore, to a great extent because of the bold deeds of the Lowrys, which filled the Lumber River Indians with a new pride of race, and a new confidence that despite generations of defeat, revitalized their will to survive as a people.

[210] Communications scholar Lorraine Ahearn wrote that the portrayal of the Lowry War in the confines of the "outlaw tropes" of the 1870s by the media helped establish its modern "mythic narrative" in the Lumbee community as a story of "Native American resistance to white supremacy".